physpower, strength, and weapon damage

[Sirrocco]

So I noticed recently that increasing strength is capable of increasing damage even on non-strength weapons (like mindstars and staves) presumably by increasing physpower. I wind up playign a fair number of classes out there that care about weapon damage for staves and mindstars, but wouldn't otherwise wish to raise strength. Are there any rules of thumb here? I've done a bit of poking around and seen the "dam = 0.3 * (phys_power + totstat) * power * talented_mod" equation but I was hoping to have certain bits of it demystified. For example, physpower levels off (just like all the power substats, and all the saves, and so forth). Does the totstat number do that too in some fashion? If I have a staff with an 80% magic coefficient, does that mean that the fastest way to crank raw melee damage damage on it via stats is always going to be to add str for the 1-to-1 physpower boost?

[HousePet]

The totstat doesn't have diminishing returns, so increasing magic will boost damage more than strength would, except when you have less than 20 strength and no mastery talent. eg. increasing the stat is pretty much always better for an 80% stat modifier.

It might be close to being worth raising strength instead of cunning with mindstars. But I haven't checked the math.

[twas Brillig]

Slightly obscure wiki page to the rescue: Combat damage. Note that this is relatively old, so some of the details may have changed.

[grayswandir]

Also note that 1.3 introduced a ui option that makes step 2 show up directly on the tooltip (as a percentage) instead of the weapon damage range. I forget what it's called at the moment.

[Sirrocco]

Ah. So it sounds like it's at "It's not a terrible idea to qualify for skills and/or lower tiers of armor with base str" level, but that it's probably not worth cranking heavily. Cool. Thanks.

[Atarlost]

Ah. So it sounds like it's at "It's not a terrible idea to qualify for skills and/or lower tiers of armor with base str" level, but that it's probably not worth cranking heavily. Cool. Thanks.

Well, that depends. If you're something like a mindslayer you only care about will and cunning so maxing strength as your third stat is an okay choice while for a shadowblade it's kind of not.

[Sirrocco]

Con, cunning, and dex all have solid uses even to builds that don't have a class-specific or weapon-specific reason to care about them. Most resource economies get better when you crank will. Strength... doesn't have anything like that. It has armor equipping (which can be sleazed with gear-based stats, if you can afford to be patient) and some saves (which isn't that big a deal) and carry cap (which after the Sher'tul base opens up *really* isn't that big a deal) and physpower. Out of those, basically everything except the physpower and the saves goes obsolete eventually.

[Atarlost]

Con, cunning, and dex all have solid uses even to builds that don't have a class-specific or weapon-specific reason to care about them. Most resource economies get better when you crank will. Strength... doesn't have anything like that. It has armor equipping (which can be sleazed with gear-based stats, if you can afford to be patient) and some saves (which isn't that big a deal) and carry cap (which after the Sher'tul base opens up *really* isn't that big a deal) and physpower. Out of those, basically everything except the physpower and the saves goes obsolete eventually.

Strength gives the same save boost as Con and physical power may be more valuable than HP. Carrying capacity is also significant if you want to carry swaps. Maybe dex is better for a mindslayer, but it's being replaced in accuracy calculations so it's not a clear cut case. Anyone using mindstars in melee is in a similar situation.